I like how you made the 'one button' idea your own! One thing I didn’t quite understand though: when I press E, the gauge doesn’t seem to stop right away, so I wasn’t really sure what was happening.
About the gauge - that's unusual. I had some troubles with collisions when making this minigame and I had to take some shortcuts and I think that's the issue.
Thank you for pointing that out and sorry for inconvenience.